Aqua - Christmas in New York City (Aqua Romance Travel Series) Read online

  Since then she had avoided Christmas festivities as they were a painful reminder. Roger obliged but with Harry it was different. He became a child at Christmas and his enthusiasm caught on and brought an influx of joy into a time when she usually retreated.

  Harry squeezed her hand. “You okay?”

  She nodded and leaned her head on his shoulder. Everything had been okay since she met him. The cruise on the Aqua was now months away but there was never a moment of doubt in her mind.

  When they returned to New York, Casey held onto her brownstone in the Upper East Side and Harry kept his condo in the Upper West Side until they could find a new home that would accommodate all of their things. In the meantime, weekdays were spent at a house Harry rented close to the Locknore campus in Upstate New York, and every weekend they flew back to Manhattan. Now that the winter break was in session, they had one month together of pure enjoyment.

  Casey looked at the bright band of diamonds that sparkled on her finger. The light even caught the deep red of the garnets and with each flicker her thoughts returned to that night on the sea when Harry proposed.

  Harry brushed her bangs aside, kissed her lightly on the forehead and then whispered, “If you’re up for it, I have something else I want to show you.”

  “I thought this was it.”

  “Why?”

  “You know, the twelve days of Christmas.”

  He shook his head. “I’m giving you twelve each day.” He would give her the moon if he could but he was glad to do things slowly. Rather than rush their wedding, he had made a sizable donation to the university and they accepted their engagement as a matrimonial commitment. It gave Harry and Casey time to plan their special day and take a lengthy honeymoon during the summer break.

  By the time they pulled into Dyker Heights, Casey’s eyes were closed and her mind had drifted back to Harry, who was massaging her hands and humming softly in her ear. She had come to love the sound of his voice, recognize the timbre of a note and know the song he was going to sing. Within less than six months together, she felt like they had known each other for a lifetime.

  “We’re here,” Harry whispered.

  The driver had stopped near 84th St and Eleventh. They got out of the car and when they turned the corner Casey gasped. “The Polizzotto's house!”

  Every year, her parents brought her to Brooklyn to see the Christmas lights. They would come on the day after Thanksgiving, when the neighborhood of Dyker Heights transformed several blocks with elaborate holiday decorations. Even when her mom was sick, they bundled her up in the back of the car and pulled her on a sled.

  Harry craned his neck to the second level where reindeer overlooked the yard, then back to the toy soldiers riding life-size horses. “Must take forever to set up,” said Harry.

  “Around three days my dad told me. I mean, look!” Casey walked toward the merry-go-round and then stopped mid-stride. “Wait here,” she said.

  By the time she reached the two-story tall Santa, the man had turned around, the multi-colored bobbles bouncing on his wool hat. It was the hat that drew her. She had only ever seen one like it.

  As the plastic Santa sang and spread his arms out wide, they exchanged glances until he walked toward her with a slow, uneven shuffle. “I thought you didn’t come here anymore.” His voice was loud and booming.

  “Same for you.”

  His eyes twitched. “I got sentimental.”

  There was an awkward silence between them. He rubbed his hands together, she fiddled with her scarf.

  “Looks like you gained weight, Cass.”

  “Just a big coat.”

  His pitch was lower than usual but then it had been a few months since they talked. She nodded toward the decorations. “Still looks the same.”

  He moved snow on the ground around with the tips of his boots. “He’s been decorating the house for more than a quarter century now.”

  “Didn’t the owner pass away?”

  “A few years ago but his wife continues the tradition.”

  “Mom would-” They said it at the same time and then turned back toward the eighteen-foot soldiers guarding the house and watched a pair of toddlers jumping at them. He lit a cigarette and turned to her. “So when are you having kids?”

  “I don’t think I’ll have any.”

  “So the bloodline will stop.” He shook his head. “You come from a line of the brightest and best.”

  “You’re sounding like Hitler.”

  He rested his hands on the top of his stomach. “The family name won’t continue.”

  “Women lose their maiden name at marriage anyhow.”

  "Who will take care of you in your old age?" He spoke in a low reproving voice.

  “That’s not why you have children.”

  “What will you do when you can’t care for yourself?”

  “A selfish reason for having children.”

  “It’s why I had you.” He said it without apology.

  The words pressed down on Casey and she folded her hands in submission. The joyful holiday music and twinkling lights contrasted with the conversation. So he expected her to take care of him?

  “How’s Roger?”

  “We’re not together.”

  He dropped the cigarette and ground it into the snow with the heel of his boot. “You won’t find better than him.”

  She sighed and looked up at the sky, swollen with snowflakes. “He didn’t want children.”

  “He told me he would take care of his parents.”

  “He wouldn’t even take care of me.” She said it with disdain and fury.

  “He would if he had to.”

  “So is that how you felt about taking care of Mom?” Her hands flew straight out into the falling snow. “You had to.”

  He took off the hat and combed his gloved hands through his thinning hair. “Don’t go there, Casey.”

  “Or me.” She said it loudly, without a care for whoever might hear. “I was the burden for you once she died.”

  “Don’t start that again.” He said it as an order, as if he prided himself on not asking for a favour.

  All Casey could do was watch the bobbles bounce back and forth as he gestured with it and then marched off. Each stitch had been made by her mother, carefully knitted to match his socks. She had made three pairs for each of them. After her death, her father had thrown them out, despite Casey’s pleading.

  For the rest of the night, she walked along 84th Street and 83rd Street with Harry, but her father’s words echoed above the loudspeakers that blared carols from the twinkling decorated homes. ‘It’s why I had you.’

  The whole encounter had dampened the evening. They walked up to the life size reindeer, Scrooge and his ghosts, but she couldn’t even laugh at the kitschy pieces. Harry tried to console her by saying. “We’ll bring our children here every year.”

  “Children?”

  “We’ve picked their names a few times.”

  Casey nodded. The first time had been on the Aqua, during a moment where they were laughing at Harry’s Italian name, Arrigo. They had said they’d never choose names that were ripe for teasing in the schoolyard. They would be simple cross-cultural names. Casey even suggested that their daughter could be named Lina, after Harry’s mother.

  Now that they were back home though, and had planned her mastectomy for the spring, she felt a weight of responsibility when they talked of children and she grew more reluctant to even consider the possibility. “I could die of breast cancer like my mother and aunt,” she said. “I have the gene mutation.”

  “Won’t the mastectomy erase your fears?”

  “Nothing is certain.” She looked away, thinking of all the years she stood before these lights without her mother, how she wouldn’t want her children to suffer such a loss.

  “We will have children.” Harry said it with such certainty that it strengthened her resolve. He wiped snowflakes from her scarf and kissed her. “And you will be here for us, for
a long, long time.”

  It was those exact sentiments, that deep commitment to her, the belief in love, that made Casey fall in love with Harry in the first place. It was a night on the Aqua, and the stars shone bright in the sky as the cruise ship floated on the Mediterranean.

  Her body had longed for him, her thighs ached for his touch, for him to open her up, to feel her moist skin, to be inside of her. Yet the moment he came close to her breasts, her body seized up, as if this was the one part of her yet undecided about love, the one part that could change everything between them.

  Harry understood without saying a word. Rather than pull back when she froze, he loved her even more, as if each part of her body was a portal to love. When she froze, Harry paused briefly, then gently moved his lips toward her arm, his tongue tracing each muscle, his lips pressing in and out of her shoulder as if they were her thighs. She had never been kissed so passionately, as if her arm were her breasts, and each part of her as sensual as the next.

  When they curled up in each other’s arms that night, his strong arms holding her, she felt the longing between them, but also Harry’s understanding. He kissed her gently and then pulled her toward him, his body curling around her like a shell. It was at that moment, when she felt safe and protected, that she knew Harry would stay with her through anything. It was at that moment, she fell in love.

  Harry dusted the snowflakes off of Casey’s jacket and said. “I hope our children have your eyes.”

  Why should she be concerned, Casey thought. If he felt this strong about her having children and being there for them, she was worrying for nothing.

  Turkey

  HARRY STARTED cutting tomatoes into the palm of his hand. “It was my mom who taught me this trick, you know. It catches all the juices.”

  Harry cut the wedges over the large bowl that he would serve the salad in. It took him back to their time on the Aqua. “You know, Chef Amber shared her recipe with me.”

  “You’re setting the stakes high,” Casey teased.

  Harry couldn’t remember all the parts of her salad but Amber had shared the steps with him in an email. Capturing any extra liquid that fell into the bowl added to the natural juices. Next he sprinkled sea salt and gave a good stir, then let the tomatoes sit for a few minutes so that the salt drew out the natural juices from the tomato. This was the key component to her tasty Greek salad - there wasn’t a need for lemon juice or vinegar as the natural acidic juices blended with the olive oil to make her unique dressing.

  “I wished I would have cooked more with my mom. Learned from her.”

  “You can’t do it all. You were a teenager. Life is untouchable at that age.” Harry could only think of his own mother and how he hadn’t spent enough time with her once he left Venice for the United States.

  How long ago even the last trip to Venice seemed. Just a few months ago he sat on his mother’s balcony, reading her letters. Everything had changed since then. A door had been opened and he had walked right through it.

  “Mom was always so proud of me,” Casey paused and wiped her eyes. “I always heard her talking with friends on the phone. Casey this and Casey that.”

  Harry looked over and saw Cassandra’s head bent over the sink, her shoulders shaking. This was the woman who confidently wore a low-backed sequined red gown to the New York City Ballet’s Nutcracker the previous night, a dress that clung to the curves of her body. The same woman who strode through the crowd with such assurance still carried such pain within her.

  It was her eleventh day Christmas gift to him, a series of artistic experiences meant to ignite his creativity. When the one-ton Christmas tree grew from twelve to forty feet high, she leaned over to him and chuckled in his ear, ‘You’ll do it a bit classier in your painting, right?’ He loved her sense of humor.

  Harry walked over to her and covered her body with his till she stopped crying. Then he pulled up a chair for her. “I’ll finish cleaning up after,” he said softly. “If you want, you can help me. I know you find cooking therapeutic.” Casey washed her hands, rolled up her sleeves, sat down in front of three cucumbers.

  Harry handed her a knife. “Slice them thin.” He then changed the subject to something neutral and told her how Chef Amber had a small garden on the Aqua, a tiny greenhouse off of the kitchen where she plucked fresh herbs from planters and grew enough tomatoes for her Chef’s Table meals.

  When Harry saw Cassandra set into a rhythmic pattern, her shoulders dropped and her breathing slowed, he stopped talking. She was in the ‘cooking zone’ as Chef Amber called it, a meditative state where all else faded into the task of the moment. Before long Cassandra was chatting. “I have my mom’s cookbooks.” She pointed her head toward a shelf. “There are certain pages that are dog-eared, or smeared, so I know those were ones she cooked often. Sometimes, when I open those pages, I feel her right beside me.”

  “I felt that when I was at my mom’s apartment in Venice. Everything there reminded me of her.”

  “Why didn’t you bring anything home with you?”

  “I wanted to leave it there. I’m going to keep the apartment. I figured it can be our European getaway.”

  Casey liked the sound of that. Their getaway. Harry talked a lot about that lately - their home, their car, their wedding. Finally she had found the man who understood her, who was willing to share everything with her, even family holidays with her crusty father.

  There was a pause and Harry waited, then started slicing the red onions. “You’re okay with that?”

  She nodded. “I’m just thinking about how wonderful my life has become now that you’re in it. It’s like a dream.”

  “And?”

  “These days have been so wonderful, I just don’t want Dad to ruin it.”

  “It will be fine.”

  “It’s just so magical right now and it’s like bringing Scrooge into our midst.”

  “Then maybe we can change him.”

  “You don’t know my father.”

  “I’ll tell you one thing.” Harry stopped slicing and looked up at her. “Nothing will come between us.”

  Harry reached for a jar that Chef Amber had given him. She had brought it by personally for him before he and Cassandra left the Aqua, and it was filled with chocolate brownies. He and Cassandra had eaten them that evening and kept the jar by their night table before washing it as a memento of a moment. Touching it, Harry could still picture their first night, could still hear his voice whispering, ‘Cassandra. Cassandra’. Her hand pulled his head toward him, her fingers reaching through his hair and for a moment they came up for air and he looked at her and whispered her name. Moments of the week together flashed before him as he finished the dressing and pressed cloves of garlic into the jar, along with chopped fresh oregano and some dried leaves. He sprinkled some sea salt and ground black pepper corns on top. He measured out the extra virgin olive oil and poured it directly on top of the spices. Then he shook the jar. This made the difference - shaking rather than stirring or whisking.

  CASEY WATCHED Harry prepare the salad more than she helped him. Here he was, the man of her dreams, and she had to travel all the way to Italy to meet him even though they both lived in New York City. As she watched Harry clean up the kitchen and double check the settings on the dining table, her mind returned to their first port visit on the island of Crete.

  Harry had laid out the food on a blanket, opened a jar of olives and sliced some fresh bread and cheese. He scraped thick honey onto two slices of the bread and handed her a piece. They made to interlink arms, just as a loving couple might to sip their wine, but the bread got in the way; honey smeared Casey’s chin, then her fingers, then she dropped hers and it stuck to Harry’s arm.

  They tried to wipe it off, then scrub it with sand, but it only got stickier. In desperation they walked into the water and bent over to wash it off, when a rogue wave crashed over them. Wet and soaking they walked further into the water, Harry’s shirt sticking to his muscular arms, Casey
’s white dress tight around her nipples. They looked at each other for a moment, then embarrassed, resumed their washing.

  She took his hand and led him further again into the water until it was above their waists. She stared into his eyes, touched a hand to his chest, and slowly sank into the water, her fingers trailing down his chest, stomach and finally, his zip was tugged down and she took him in her mouth.

  Her recollections were disrupted by the door bell and her body tensed as she walked to the front door with Harry. He held her face in between his hands and said, “Remember, everything will be fine,” then kissed her as he turned the door handle.

  Foster stood at the door with an impatient scowl on his pale face. He was heavyset, with sparse grey strands of hair combed over from the right side of his head to cover up a bald spot.

  His shiny leather shoes creaked as he entered the hallway without shaking Harry’s outstretched hand.

  A shiver ran down Casey’s back. “Dad, this is Harry.” Her eyes darted to Harry. “Harry, this is my dad, Foster.”

  Foster sized up Harry, then reached out his hand and gave him one solid, bone-crushing shake. No words were exchanged and he pointed to the tree. “Those look like the decorations we had on our tree.”

  Harry piped in. “Cassandra told me about it so I gave them to her.”

  “You call her Cassandra?”

  “I do.”

  Foster turned to his daughter. “What else do you do differently with this guy?”

  “His name’s Harry, Dad.”

  He waved her off. “You’re cooking.”

  “I tried a turkey.”

  Foster folded his arms. “He doesn’t cook?”

  “Harry’s a great cook, actually. He made the salad and-”

  Foster turned his big chest toward Harry and handed him his jacket. “What do you do for work, Harry?”

  “I’m in the Investment business. Angel funding.”

  “That’s an unstable industry.”

  “Harry’s done very well for himself, Dad.”